Eminem's 'Beautiful' Hits iTunes

May 12 2009 2:32 PM EDT



Eminem's 'Beautiful' Hits iTunes
'It's the best song out of that batch that I did when I wasn't sober,' Em tells Vibe of the melancholy track.
By Jayson Rodriguez
Eminem has gone on record about his battle with drug addiction in interviews with Vibe and XXL magazines recently. Now, the rapper's song "Beautiful," which premiered on iTunes on Tuesday (May 12), paints a vivid picture of the struggle he dealt with during his hiatus from hip-hop.

It's one of the most heartfelt recordings in Eminem's career. The song appears on his upcoming album, Relapse, due May 19. In his first-person narrative in Vibe, Em said the song is the only one he kept from the recordings he made during that dark period in his life. He's been sober for a year now, he said.



"There's only one song on the record that I produced. It's a track called 'Beautiful,' " he said in the magazine's June issue. "And one of the only reasons that I put that track on there is that I feel like it's the best song out of that batch that I did when I wasn't sober. At the time I felt like, 'This is it for me.' I wrote the first verse and a half in rehab, and when I came out, I finished it. It was the only song that marks that period without bringing me back to that place. Every other track not only didn't fit with the album, but when I listened to it, it would bring up bad memories."

The melancholy song sample's Rock Therapy's "Reaching Out" and features Em revisiting his decisions over the past few years and how his life spiraled out of control.

"I'm just so f---ing depressed, I just can't seem to get out of this slump/ If I could just get over this hump/ But I need something to pull me out this dump," he raps on the track.